


Creature Comforts

by Winterwake



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Community: makinghugospin, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mostly Gen, Touch-Starved, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 19:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterwake/pseuds/Winterwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kink meme prompt: "Valvert wingfic. I want them to feel each other’s wings."</p><p>There are many things Javert will not acknowledge he shares with Valjean. This is merely the strangest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creature Comforts

Valjean’s wings are out when he returns to the bedroom, his arms full of towels and a nightshirt. Javert watches warily through his damp hair as Valjean kneels before him, evidently unashamed of the pair of wide dark eagle wings trailing behind him. The wings flair as Valjean kneels, and Javert is reminded, bizarrely, of a woman in petticoats spreading her skirts to sit on the floor.

Anything is better than meeting Valjean’s gaze, so he rests his glazed, waterburned eyes on the feathers.

They are glossier than he remembers, and tipped white where once they were dark brown.

In Toulon they kept those feathers clipped down to the quick. He touched them once when Valjean was putting up a fight, and the warden called for more men as reinforcements. In the press of guards who had rushed to seize a swinging arm, Javert had caught hold of one of the wings. Its frightful strength beating under his fingers stayed with him long after the man had been subdued. After that he always felt a grim sense of satisfaction as the guard’s shears did their work.

If Valjean thinks of this now, he does not betray it. He has been guarded, his kindness impenetrable, ever since he pulled Javert out of the water. Javert was furious and fought on the quay, but by now anger has given way to weary resignation. He sits on the bed, trying to disappear into himself.

Fingers work at the buttons of his wet coat, so gentle they elude his notice at first. Javert’s brain probes the sensation dully, making a few false starts before he realizes that Valjean is removing his coat, and taking a few more moments to perceive the danger.

"Get off! Don't touch me!"

Javert tries to twist away, but his coat is already down around his elbows.

It is too late. There is no hiding the two bulky appendages against his back, their curve unmistakable beneath the fabric of his shirt.

Valjean sits back on his knees, gobsmacked. He looks up at Javert with dawning wonder.

Javert nearly spits with rage. He wishes to explain, to reassert himself as a creature of the law, to draw the line clearly between the two of them. At least he had the decency to hide them; he clipped his wings himself. He would have cut them off at the joint if he could have. But the trembling of his wings beneath his fingers, the palpable reality of their blood and nerves had always stayed the knife blade. To cut them out was to acknowledge that they were a part of him. Better to fasten them down and bury them beneath his iron grey greatcoat.

His fingers find his shirt buttons, and he begins furiously unbuttoning them.

“Very well then, allow me to satisfy your curiosity. May it bring you satisfaction, since I may have none.”

He pulls his wet shirt off and throws it at Valjean, whose mouth is slightly open in protest or surprise when it smacks him in the face. Javert’s fingers fumble at the bindings that have been carefully wound from his ribs to his shoulders, keeping his wings in place. It takes time, Javert frequently fumbles with his numb fingers as he works, but Valjean makes no move to cross the room to him. His eyes are heavy on Javert, and Javert feels a twinge of embarrassment and wonders how he came to be stripping himself naked before Valjean. The last of the bandages fall to the floor.

He can feel them unfold behind him. They flutter crookedly a few times, atrophied from disuse.

Valjean swallows. “You keep them like that all the time?”

“Of course,” he snaps. But he feels an unaccountable stab of guilt, and his skin is beginning to goose-pimple from the unfamiliar exposure to air and someone else's eyes.

“Did you have them in Toulon?” Valjean asks curiously, moving towards him.

“No.... Yes. But not while you were there. They didn't start growing until after you were paroled.... They just... my back started itching one morning, perhaps a year before my assignment in Montreuil.”

"You hid them well," Valjean muses, reaching and touching the wing where it bends. The thing reacts on its own, fluttering up into his warm hand, eager for a friendly touch. “Stupid things have a mind of their own,” Javert grumbles. But they are still a part of him, and their pleasure registers in his nerves.

“You can control them, after a fashion, but they need to be trained, like any limbs.”

Javert scowls at the ground and grips his hands together.

Fingers brush over feathers and they flinch. “You're hurt," Valjean says, his face neutral. "May I check for broken bones?”

Javert sighs. He is very tired. "Do what you like. I'll have no peace tonight either way." 

Valjean does not acknowledge the bitterness. He shifts on the bed and puts a hand on Javert's shoulder, gently turning him so that Javert's back is to him. He graces his fingers along the delicate joint where feathers give way to human skin. His touch is gentle and methodical. Javert glances over his shoulder. He never looks at his wings if he can help it, and he’s startled by just how sparse the feathers are, how mottled the skin looks. A few ragged grey feathers have already fluttered to the bed.

He remembers when they grew in white, when downy feathers first began to sprout between his shoulder blades, when he could feel the nubs of new bones begin to crest his skin and keep growing until they had sprouted joints and carpals and feathers, the growing pains aching deep within him. He has not slept on his back in fifteen years. Was he not supposed to be horrified?

He returns to himself and the over-tender touches that offer nowhere to hide. He can feel the pressure of Valjean’s fingers lighting along his carpal bones. He has grown disconnected from the sensation in his wings, but they are slowly coming back to life under this attention. The things themselves seemed pleased, twitching and arcing into the touch.

Suddenly Valjean touches a sore spot, an open wound, perhaps sustained when he was overpowered by the students, and they flap angrily a few times before settling against Javert’s back, ruffled and wary. Valjean gets up and returns with ointment and bandages. Without a word, he dresses the injury.

“It will hurt, but there’s nothing here beyond repair.”

Valjean pauses, seeming to remember that Javert is only here because everything is hopelessly beyond repair.

“I have not forgotten what brought you here. I don’t know what made you do it, though I presume it’s not about your wings.”

Javert’s fingers twine mechanically in the bedsheets. He would submit to a hundred conversations about wings before he talked about this. He doesn’t know how to talk about this. It requires words for thoughts he never had before tonight, and only dimly understand even now. 

“I have done evil. Or kindness. I cannot tell the difference anymore," he pauses, "I have let a criminal go."

“The boy? You have saved his life.”

"I don't care about the corpse," Javert plucks up a feather from on the bed and begins to shred it. His face twists with anger, at himself and the world that no longer makes sense.

"Oh! _Oh_ ," Valjean gives an uncomfortable start, understanding dawning.

"I wanted to arrest you," he said bluntly, "But I could not. You have nothing to fear from me in the future. You have robbed me of my certainty, and my courage with it."

He is aware that Valjean is staring intensely at his back. “It takes courage to show mercy. I do not think you are a coward.”

"I am not interested in your opinion of me.”

“Someone else's opinion can count for a great deal, especially when you are in no position to judge your own worth,” Valjean says, standing as he does so and holding out a towel to Javert. Javert's hand opens, and he takes it tentatively. "Someone else saw worth in me, once, and it saved my soul." Javert feels as if he has caught a glimpse of something holy, a flash of wings and light, though he cannot fathom what it means.

“Did they grow back?” he asks hoarsely, nodding at Valjean's wings. “Do they... work?”

Valjean can see it for the partial dodge it is, but he seems satisfied that Javert is not going to decide to die again tonight. He turns slightly, and his wings spread out, so wide they seem to fill the room. He flaps them once, like he is getting ready to take flight, and the air stirs Javert's hair. His fingertips brush the tips, and queasy pleasure stirs in his stomach. He runs his hands higher, and buries his fingers in the soft down. The feather are impossibly long and perfectly formed. Javert lets them swallow up his sight until he can see nothing else.


End file.
